Saturday, February 3, 2018

Kicking off the 2018 Conference

It’s a different scene this year at the annual SCBWI conference in New York City. The organization has transformed this winter conference to provide writers and illustrators with deeper opportunities to study and explore elements of craft.

Instead of doing shorter sessions focused on introductions to editors and agents, the 659 participants are all taking two-and-a-half-hour intensive sessions on everything from middle grade fantasy with Gail Carson Levine to historical fiction with Laurie Halse Anderson, nonfiction with Daniel Nayeri, picture books with Connie Hsu, and so many more extraordinary offerings.

Many people who wanted to come weren’t able to attend the sold-out event. Here’s a pro tip: Mark the dates of the conferences in your calendars. If you think you can attend, sign up the day the conference is announced so you’re not left out in the cold (and that’s literal this chilly weekend in NYC).

There are fewer people at the conference this year to accommodate this change, 659 in all, 300 of whom are published. We come from almost every state (no Alabama or Arkansas), and we do all sorts of things from our day jobs, from crime-scene investigations to law and everything you might imagine in between.

This promises to be a game-changing weekend. Follow along the blog and Twitter hash tag: NY2018SCBWI.